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Soulfully Gritty

Earlier today I got an afternoon coffee while out running errands. My lid fell on the floor and the woman working there immediately asked if I needed a new lid. I literally laughed out loud saying, "hahaha! With my life style I don't think that would be necessary. I'm the kind of guy that would lick the floor and be fine." A woman waiting for her coffee chimed in laughing that since she had kids those kinds of things no longer matter.

When I got home and walked through my apartment door I was met with a familiar smell: musk, sweat, dirty socks, incense, leftovers, coffee, and patchouli. The smell was soulful, spicy, peppery... pungent even.

I went into my bedroom to change clothes thinking I would do a yoga/movement practice. I picked up a shirt off the floor and smelled it. I was simultaneously taken aback and aroused by the smell. I put it on, lit some incense and put my hands on my mat. As I stretched into downward facing dog I felt a great sense of satisfaction with my life.

Then I remembered one of my favorite short stories, "Living Like Weasels" written by Annie Dillard from her collection, Teaching A Stone To Talk:

'We could live under the wild rose wild as weasels, mute and uncomprehending. I could very calmly go wild. I could live two days in the den, curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses. Down is a good place to go, where the mind is single.... I remember muteness as a prolonged and giddy fast, where every moment is a feast of utterance received....

We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience- even silence- by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity."